Improving OER websites for learners with disabilities
Rosa Navarrete, Sergio Luján-Mora · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A) · doi:10.1145/2899475.2899517
Summary
This extended abstract presents an OER (Open Educational Resources) website designed to enhance the user experience of learners with disabilities when searching for and retrieving educational resources. The authors argue that despite the inclusive vision behind the OER movement, people with disabilities face significant barriers both in accessing OER websites and in using the resources themselves. Their solution addresses this through a framework built on three pillars: accessibility, information architecture, and usability. The website allows users to select from disability-specific profiles—blindness, deafness, cognitive/learning ("simplify"), motor skills, low vision, and contrast—each of which adapts both the interface presentation and the selection of resources returned. For example, the blindness profile restricts results to resources usable with screen readers such as audio-described videos or PDF/UA documents, while the deafness profile filters for resources with subtitles, transcripts, or sign language versions. Beyond the preset profiles, users can fine-tune preferences for text size, font type (serif/sans-serif), line spacing, and navigation aids like breadcrumbs and highlighted links. All personalization settings are stored for subsequent visits but can be changed at any time.
Key findings
The website uses the IMS AccessForAll (AfA) metadata standards to power its personalization and resource matching. The AfA Digital Resource Description (DRD) standard describes resources in terms of their accessibility features, while the AfA Personal Needs and Preferences (PNP) specification captures user accessibility requirements based on their selected disability profile. This metadata-driven approach creates a common language for matching learner needs with appropriate resources—for instance, ensuring a deaf learner is only presented with videos that include sign language interpretation or subtitles. The system architecture connects user profiles to the AfA PNP standard, which then drives search queries against AfA DRD-described resources. The interface design prioritizes the search function on the home page, recognizing that resource findability is the primary user goal. Each disability profile triggers specific interface adaptations: the motor skills profile enlarges interactive elements and adds skip links with focus flashing; the low vision profile scales text to 200% and underlines links; the simplify profile shows a table of contents for navigation and strips the interface to main content only with increased text size and line spacing.
Relevance
This work highlights a persistent gap in the OER ecosystem: the disconnect between the open education movement's inclusive ideals and the actual accessibility of OER platforms for people with disabilities. The dual approach of adapting both the website interface and the resource selection based on disability profiles is a practical model that other educational platforms could adopt. The use of IMS AccessForAll metadata standards demonstrates how standardized accessibility descriptions can enable automated matching between learner needs and suitable resources—a capability that most current OER repositories lack. However, as a two-page extended abstract, the paper provides limited detail on implementation, user testing, or evaluation of effectiveness. The disability profile approach, while practical, risks oversimplifying the diversity of user needs within each category. Nonetheless, the framework offers a useful starting point for organizations building accessible educational resource platforms.
Tags: open educational resources · user experience · personalization · information architecture · e-learning accessibility · metadata standards
Standards referenced: IMS AccessForAll · IMS AfA DRD · IMS AfA PNP